Arguments you should not use

[Cow Poke]

Feedback loop?

I hate those. Especially the high-pitched ones that seem to intensify beyond painful before the sound man cuts back the volume!

[shunyadragon]

And if there is an island that is not on the map, the map is obviously wrong, so once we see it we add it. But we know there is an island there through empirical evidence. Likewise, we understand the laws of physics mostly due to empirical evidence. The evidence determines the laws and we adjust the laws accordingly. That's why they're descriptive. But none of this allows a magical soul. If there was a soul that could cause matter to move, we'd have empirical evidence for it and it would be part of the laws of physics but we don't and we fully understand all the relevant laws of physics.

I really liked your Sean Carroll reference in response to many arguments that claim 'science does not know' therefore . . ., but unfortunately these arguments are a classic supposed 'appeal to ignorance.'

A classic example is the Kalam argument:

Source: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/

5. The Kalām Cosmological Argument
A second type of cosmological argument, contending for a first or beginning cause of the universe, has a venerable history, especially in the Islamic tradition. Although it had numerous defenders through the centuries, it received new life in the recent voluminous writings of William Lane Craig. Craig formulates the kalām cosmological argument this way (in Craig and Smith 1993, chap. 1):

Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
(1) The universe began to exist.

(2) Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

(3) Since no scientific explanation (in terms of physical laws) can provide a causal account of the origin of the universe, the cause must be personal (explanation is given in terms of a personal agent).

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[shunyadragon]

My argument is that Shuny is a poop head therefore it follows that Christianity is true! Works for me.

[Sparko]

we are all mindless robots therefore your argument is invalid.

[Carrikature]

Feedback loop?

Yes. It doesn't have to 'overcome nature' if the system is already setup to adjust future actions according to previously observed effects.

[Carrikature]

we are all mindless robots therefore your argument is invalid.

I've never understood the "no free will = no mind" equivocation.

[Sparko]

I've never understood the "no free will = no mind" equivocation.

well if you are a mindless robot, then "understand" would be a foreign concept since your thoughts are merely generated by your brain and are in response to various stimuli and not controlled by any self-aware sentience.

[Carrikature]

well if you are a mindless robot, then "understand" would be a foreign concept since your thoughts are merely generated by your brain and are in response to various stimuli and not controlled by any self-aware sentience.

Yes, you can't understand things if you don't have a mind. Having a mind is not the same thing as having will, though.

[Sparko]

Yes, you can't understand things if you don't have a mind. Having a mind is not the same thing as having will, though.

as far as I know you can't have one without the other.

[Carrikature]

as far as I know you can't have one without the other.

That's what I mean by the equivocation. Will isn't a necessary component of mind. Even if it were, the free will discussion doesn't involve the existence of will, only its form. There's absolutely no point at which rejection of LFW equates to mindlessness.

[Sparko]

That's what I mean by the equivocation. Will isn't a necessary component of mind. Even if it were, the free will discussion doesn't involve the existence of will, only its form. There's absolutely no point at which rejection of LFW equates to mindlessness.

I think this is where you need to define "mind" and "will" because as far as I can tell, you have to have at least a rudimentary mind to have a will. Unless you are just defining "will" as "doing something" in which case a computer or an insect has a "will"

[Carrikature]

I think this is where you need to define "mind" and "will" because as far as I can tell, you have to have at least a rudimentary mind to have a will. Unless you are just defining "will" as "doing something" in which case a computer or an insect has a "will"

You're contradicting yourself. If you have to have a mind to have a will, then a will can't be a necessary component of the mind.


Will: ability to select a course of action from among various alternatives

Mind: the part of you that reasons, feels, perceives, judges, etc.


I think it's reasonable to say that minds can have various abilities to do any of the above. 'Will' would be part of 'reasons', but we could probably point to animals that can feel/perceive/judge without any actual ability to reason.

Notice that 'self-aware' isn't listed in that definition. Self-awareness is a defining aspect of consciousness, but not for having a mind at all.

[Sparko]

You're contradicting yourself. If you have to have a mind to have a will, then a will can't be a necessary component of the mind.


Will: ability to select a course of action from among various alternatives

Mind: the part of you that reasons, feels, perceives, judges, etc.

Hmm I am not contradicting myself. I believe you have to have a mind to make free will decisions. You just confirmed it. A mind lets you judge the various alternatives and use your will to make a choice. Without a mind, any choices you make would be programmed, instinct or random. If your thoughts were just predetermined biological functions then you would not actually have a mind and could not consider your choices and use your will freely. You would just make instinctive or random choices. Yet we do have minds and can consider our choices and make them rationally. Therefore our choices are done freely.

I think it's reasonable to say that minds can have various abilities to do any of the above. 'Will' would be part of 'reasons', but we could probably point to animals that can feel/perceive/judge without any actual ability to reason.

higher function animals do actually reason. I can see my dog reason and make choices. But lower order animals like a gold fish, or an insect make choices based on instinct which are preprogrammed biological responses. I would say they don't actually have a will or a mind.

Notice that 'self-aware' isn't listed in that definition. Self-awareness is a defining aspect of consciousness, but not for having a mind at all.

And yet we are self-aware, and that allows us to make free will decisions instead of being mindless robots. One of the features of a mind is self-awareness. A computer can make decisions, and so can an insect. but those decisions are not based on any self-awareness or any mind. They are merely preprogrammed responses. I don't know of any minds that are not self-aware in some manner. Maybe when you are in a coma, you could still have a sort of mind, but it is not functional and can't make any decisions.

[shunyadragon]

Proposed that this argument was one that should not be made, and there was no rebuttal forthcoming.

Source: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/

5.2 Is an Actual Infinite Possible?

In defense of premise 2, Craig develops both a priori and a posteriori arguments. His primary a priori argument is an actual infinite cannot exist.

A beginningless temporal series of events is an actual infinite.

Therefore, a beginningless temporal series of events cannot exist.
Since (7) follows validly, if (5) and (6) are true, the argument is sound. In defense of premise (5), Craig argues that if actual infinites that neither increase nor decrease in the number of members they contain were to exist, we would have rather absurd consequences. For example, imagine a library with an actually infinite number of books. Suppose that the library also contains an infinite number of red and an infinite number of black books, so that for every red book there is a black book, and vice versa. It follows that the library contains as many red books as the total books in its collection, and as many red books as black books, and as many red books as red and black books combined. But this is absurd; in reality the subset cannot be equivalent to the entire set. Hence, actual infinities cannot exist in reality.

. . . a further critical issue in the kalām argument is whether, as Craig suggests, completeness (in terms of being a determinate totality) characterizes an actual infinite, or whether an infinite formed by successive synthesis is a potential infinite (as Rundle holds, chap. 8).

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The site goes into the argument more and asks questions concerning the validity of this argument, but I have more fundamental objections against the argument based more on the math.

Math is descriptive based on logic and proofs. Infinities are a part of the descriptive tool box used in science and technology. It is not a matter of whether actual infinities exist in nature or not. Actual infinities are indeed used in math to describe real phenomenon such as radioactive decay and black hole behavior. The problem with the cosmological arguments using the concept of actual infinities to limit the spacial extent of our physical existence as possibly potentially infinite is that actual infinities are sets that describe infinities within space and time, and have no relationship to potential infinities which are open ended, and are not limited by sets of infinities.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_infinity

Actual infinity is the idea that numbers, or some other type of mathematical object, can form an actual, completed totality; namely, a set. Hence, in the philosophy of mathematics, the abstraction of actual infinity involves the acceptance of infinite entities, such as the set of all natural numbers or an infinite sequence of rational numbers, as given objects.

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[Carrikature]

Hmm I am not contradicting myself. I believe you have to have a mind to make free will decisions. You just confirmed it. A mind lets you judge the various alternatives and use your will to make a choice. Without a mind, any choices you make would be programmed, instinct or random. If your thoughts were just predetermined biological functions then you would not actually have a mind and could not consider your choices and use your will freely. You would just make instinctive or random choices. Yet we do have minds and can consider our choices and make them rationally. Therefore our choices are done freely.

We agree that you have to have a mind to make free will decisions. However, there's a difference between "you must have a rudimentary mind to have a will" and "you must have a will to have a mind". The first claims mind without will; the second claims will without mind. They're mutually exclusive.

higher function animals do actually reason. I can see my dog reason and make choices. But lower order animals like a gold fish, or an insect make choices based on instinct which are preprogrammed biological responses. I would say they don't actually have a will or a mind.

Agreed.

And yet we are self-aware, and that allows us to make free will decisions instead of being mindless robots. One of the features of a mind is self-awareness. A computer can make decisions, and so can an insect. but those decisions are not based on any self-awareness or any mind. They are merely preprogrammed responses. I don't know of any minds that are not self-aware in some manner. Maybe when you are in a coma, you could still have a sort of mind, but it is not functional and can't make any decisions.

Ah, but 'self-aware' isn't a necessary component for having a mind. It's not in the definition at all. There are plenty of higher order animals which we don't consider self-aware, yet they aren't considered mindless by any stretch.

We could say that being self-aware is a requirement for free will, which I could grant. However, that depends on what we think 'self-aware' means. As best I can tell, it's not much more than an internal observer. The other internal processes don't necessarily change. Computer analogies are always dangerous in this discussion, but you could liken 'self-aware' as simply what's being displayed on your monitor. In fact, the entire discussion of LFW vs determinism is effectively trying to decide if it's 'external input' or 'being displayed on a monitor'. That's it. It's not a question of having self-awareness or a mind. It's a question of 'how does it work'. The determinist doesn't deny either one; that's just a strawman made by dissenters.

We wouldn't describe insects and other lower order animals as making decisions, though. There's no assignation of value or weighing of options. There's no feedback loop that can alter values or affect future behaviors. There's no room for variation there. Calling these things 'decisions' gets you back into equivocation territory. The only way that computers differ from lower order animals is that computers can accept external input.